Maria Brito | How to Use Creativity to Futureproof Your Career

Srini RAo

 Maria, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Maria Brito

Serene and thank you everybody who's listening. How are you?

Srini RAo

I am great. It is my pleasure to have you here. You have a new book out called How Creativity Rules the World, all of which we will get into, but as you know, we are going to talk about things that have nothing to do with that first. So, given that I've read the book and given the sound of your voice, I wanted to start by asking you where in the world did you grow up and what impact did that end up having on the choices that you've made throughout your life and your career?

Maria Brito

Yes, of course, I grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. And at that time, in the late 70s, it was a period of great economic bonanza because it was the oil boom and whatnot. So the very few, yeah, I would say from 0 to 10, it was kind of OK. And then it started to collapse for a variety of reasons, corrupt governments and things like that.

So I always had, as I grew older, this desire to move out. And I wanted to move to the States and here's why. My parents, although they didn't really have a lot of money, they had a policy which was every surplus goes to go and set me to travel or family trips and things like that outside of the country because they thought it was very important to become familiar with.

different places and different cultures and things like that. So we came to New York several times and I was obviously in love with New York as a child. I thought it was fascinating. And you know, I, as an intuitive child and only child, I realized very early on that Venezuela was not a place for me because it did not believe in meritocracy. For example, there were things that were very difficult.

growing up also that I witnessed coup d'etat. I was older than them, but coup d'etat, and riots, killings, and things like that. So the good thing is that growing up in South America, you become very focused on things like family and friends, loyalty, worms, that type of thing. And the negatives is that you also

to learn how to survive in very dire conditions. Because sometimes we had to be under lockdowns because we had war tanks outside. And sometimes there were months without gas. And so you had to even like the one of the most rich countries in the world in terms of oil and gas. Sometimes we had to really.

Maria Brito

because of the corruption of the government, we had to spend two hours lighting up, or we had to pay somebody to give us gas for the car, more expensive than normal because it was all corrupt. All these things accumulated and I said, no, listen, I really have to leave this because it does not align with my values and who I am. I moved out by the time I was 21 or something.

Srini RAo

You mentioned the idea of warmth and family and community and when you said that it just struck a memory of the dinners that I used to have with one of my friends from Columbia when I was in Brazil. We would just sit at a restaurant for three to four hours sitting and talking and I noticed that was very common with South American people. And here it seems like everybody is in a hurry all the time to just get to wherever the hell are going and you're a New Yorker.

you know, slash South American. So how do we find a balance between those two? And how do we get back to some semblance of community? Because I can tell you it's ironic how frequently people don't call you. They text, you know, we're like idiots who basically communicate with text instead of, you know, phones or, you know, video. It's mind boggling to me that we've reached this point and we don't seem to place the same value on community and warmth that other cultures seem to.

Maria Brito

Yes!

Maria Brito

You know, that's an excellent observation. And I think it is a little bit of a give and take, if you know what I'm trying to say here, is that I appreciate American culture. Of course, I'm an American citizen now. I've been here most of my adult life, and I love it. But I understand that the bedrock of everything here is business efficiency, utilizing your time to work more. And that's kind of how.

America thrives in what they make and what we export. And it's all about work. And I'm lucky enough to have married a Brazilian. So we are very tight and very connected to the same values of family and warmth and spending time with friends and things like that. So weekends, we can.

indulge in very long lunches with friends and things like that, usually in people's homes. Because you know that in a restaurant, they're going to throw this check in your face the minute you drink your coffee, you know what I mean? Because the table has to be turned so that they make more money that day and things like that. But I think that it's important to balance both things as an immigrant.

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

I feel more American at this point than South American, but I think that whatever it is important to each one of us as individuals, we preserve it and we keep it. And you see the same thing in Jewish families, for example. Or you see the same thing the same way that people also from Indian families are very tight and they have large families and large gatherings, Muslims too. So you try to keep it.

Srini RAo

Mm.

Maria Brito

to the extent that you don't want to erase it, but you want to adapt it. And I understand that certain things, for example, the three-hour lunch is not necessarily a proper thing in New York. But I have been sitting down in meetings with friends, private clubs and things like that for two or three hours. And it's really fun. It turns like a long conversation. So those people still exist.

Srini RAo

Right.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

Here we have a culture of work, and there's nothing wrong with it if you think about it. I mean, it's worse to have a culture of laziness. So I appreciate the things that may be perceived as flaws, but I bring my own flavor to the table. And if anybody wants to join me for a three-hour lunch, I'm game.

Srini RAo

Hahaha

Srini RAo

That is true. I did also see the downsides of that sort of laziness. And, you know, there's no sense of urgency. I remember living in Costa Rica. Go to the cell phone shop and the guy's like, Oh, we're out of SIM cards. I mean, how the hell are you out of SIM cards? You sell cell phones like, yeah, there's a guy down the street. You'll have to wait for a bus that takes an hour to get here to go 10 minutes from here. And it just you see that all over the place. But one thing that I wonder about, mention your husband was Brazilian.

Maria Brito

Hahaha

Srini RAo

that you're a Venezuelan. I'm always curious about this with immigrants. And you also mentioned you have kids, right? So when you think about how to preserve heritage and culture and then integrate both, you know, Brazilian culture and Venezuelan culture, how do you do that while also allowing your kids to adapt? Because the thing that I always come back to when I've had this conversation with other people is language. Like I'm almost a hundred percent sure. The first thing to go when I have kids is going to be my native language.

Maria Brito

Yes.

Maria Brito

Well, I enrolled my kids in a bilingual school for that reason so that they would have not only the support or they might see it as an imposition to learn a language, but also kind of like the academic support. And we had to choose, obviously, Spanish is a much wider spoken language. And I speak Portuguese too, but I knew for them it was going to be Spanish, what they needed the most.

joint effort my husband and I did to have them in the Bilingwell School. And the other thing is telling them stories about the places where we've born. The beauty of New York is that it has all these restaurants and not only that, you can also order all those markets in Queens and whatnot that bring Brazilian goodies and Venezuelan goodies and things like that. So food is a big.

and a very important part of teaching kids or anybody about cultures. And I love having them incorporated in that. Sometimes we show them videos or we teach them about a particular genre of music and things like that. Posa Nova, my husband loves Brazilian music, so he plays the music for the kids. And so there are many ways of keeping that alive. But at the end of the day, the kids are American, right? And so they understand.

the heritage and they think about themselves as Latinos, but they are also New Yorkers. And New York is such a particular place, right? Because you go out and everybody is not necessarily a melting pot. It's more like we are all different, right? And we are just running around in this very small island, and we are being ourselves. And so they can be themselves.

without us having to necessarily impose one thing or the other. The good news is that they are very fluent in Spanish. And I'm not sure how long is that going to stay on, because once they are out of that school and they have to do all the things, they might not practice as often as I would want to. And sometimes I talk to them in Spanish and they answer back in English, because it's mostly what they know and how fast they are.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

in their answers, but you know these are two boys ages you know 13 and 11, so I'm not going to give them that much of a hard time because it's hard enough to be a teenager you know or a twin. So but yes there is preservation of culture in many ways.

Srini RAo

I laughed because that literally is the same thing with my parents. My parents will talk to us in our native language, Delagu, and my sister and I will just reply in English, even though we can reply fluently.

So one thing I want to talk about is education in Venezuela, because there's one part of the book in particular that struck me where you tell this story about the nuns. And you say that, much to my parents' discomfort, they were called to the principal's office several times to discuss my rebellion. Sister Rodriguez, a nun born and raised in Madrid, who was in her forties, told my parents, your daughter has the ability to learn all the subjects at great speed.

Maria Brito

Yeah

Srini RAo

yet insists on doing things her way and is constantly asking provocative questions to disrupt the classroom. It wasn't enough that the obsolete Catholic school system avoided teaching creative thinking. If anyone expressed it, they wanted to crush it. That really struck me. I mean, because I think that I could relate. I kind of saw myself in that story, even though it took me a while to get to the point of rebellion. And it made me want to ask you, what is the education system like in?

athletes like Venezuela and how does it contrast to the way that we're educating people here? And then the third sort of question on top of that is how do we build an education system that prepares people like your kids for the future that they're about to experience?

Maria Brito

Well, the educational system in South America is colonial, because remember that the Spaniards came and they instituted whatever they had back home. And so they had to do the same. And that's why the majority of the continent is Catholic, because they brought everything with them, religion, how you do things, how you educate people. And so

Of course, it's not the same thing as it was 400 years ago, but it is very old. And, you know, being a Catholic, which is fine, you know, that's, it's, I have no problem being a Catholic. But what I do have a problem is how the Catholic church and the Catholic schools impart education by telling people this is the only thing that you can think, right?

And this is the answer and you don't question that, right? Because it is very intertwined with the idea of religion, right? And so this is what happened. This is the story. This is, you know, the Virgin and this is, you know, the guy who flew to heavens and came back from the cross. And I'm fine with all that, right? But don't mingle that with science and with art and tell me that everything is just one way of thinking because that's dumb.

And I was just always questioning, well, if I can get to the answer by this other method, why do I have to follow yours? Or like, if I had an idea and I wanted to bring it up and I wanted to talk to the teacher about it, it was like, this is not how it's done. So that pissed me off tremendously because I was like, well, you know, you are asking things of me that I am not able to give you because I...

I know the answer, I know how to finish this, I know how to do it, and you're telling me to follow your 1912 procedure, and I'm not really feeling comfortable about that. So that is obviously an inheritance of colonization, but in a bad way because for better or worse, the English colonizers had a much better system, you know?

Maria Brito

and had a different passion for education. And what I think is the problem with the educational system, though, in the United States is that is, first of all, underfunded, too reliant on standardized tests, which basically will never really tell you about the proper smarts of somebody. It'll tell you how good of a test.

taker that person is and how many times they went through all those books a million times and tutors and whatever. But it will never really tell you the truth about how creative and how smart or how disruptive thinking that person has. So what I envision, and that's one of the reasons why I chose this school for my kids, is because it involves a lot of different methodologies in teaching, including allowing

more of the kids to dictate and participate in the things that they want to do. And obviously, there are many ways of doing that, including allowing them to get to the answer by whatever route they want, also helping them to learn how to think and not what to think. This is given to you. And so it's the idea of bringing critical thinking.

to whatever it is that you're doing is super important because we have, as you know, in the past 10 years, been living in echo chambers where we are being fed the information we wanna be reading through our algorithms. We are friends with the people we like on social media because we agree with what they're saying and things like that, which is catastrophic if you think about it because...

It annihilates any potential for creativity and for thinking outside the box and for, you know, you don't have to agree with someone who has an opposing point of view than what you actually believe to be the right thing, but you can actually find nuggets and pieces of enlightenment in different points of view. And so I think that it's very important that my kids and the future of education should.

Maria Brito

be more based on this openness of a variety of points of view and allowing kids to find the solutions and also entrepreneurial points of view and problem solvers in a way that really showcases their talents and not just like, here's your history book. This is what happened. And just.

learn it and regurgitate it and that's it. That's really not beneficial to anybody in this day and age.

Srini RAo

Yeah. So I do want to come back to your rebellious side. But tell me about your relationship with your grandfather, because I know that you referenced him throughout the book and I just got the sense that there was this very special bond between the two of you.

Maria Brito

Well, my grandfather was a very special man because he went through so many things in his lifetime. He was born in a coastal town and his family had come to Venezuela. His parents actually, both Lebanese, had come to Venezuela because they needed other opportunities and because the Middle East at that time, it was not.

troubled as it is today, but they were also kind of looking for better things for the lives. So they moved to Venezuela and had my great grandparents had 10 kids and my grandfather was very smart and he also was, you know, there was homeschooling and then he was sent to school and whatnot, but he was putting like all these language classes and, you know, painting and music and like all the things that even though it was so

you know, so long ago, it was really nurturing for him. And he ended up going to medical school. He graduated and he specialized as an OBJYN. And then he married, he had my mom and my mother's siblings. And he was a very successful physician and he had an accident, a little accident that was like left him without having the same dexterity that an OBJYN that the caliber of he thought.

that he imposed for himself should have. And he decided that, okay, I can't be the best that I can. And so I'm going to pursue a different career. And his family, the Lebanese immigrants had opened a bank. And he said, can I get a job here because I can't be practicing medicine anymore.

So they gave him a job and within a few years, he was like the third in command of the whole thing and he was in his late 40s. And that was a time at the, you know, early 70s in Venezuela that the guerrilla was roaming the streets because they were anti-imperial and they wanted to manipulate the government and they had ideas of communism because people were.

Maria Brito

very close with Fidel Castro at the time. They were even trained by Castro. And so they kidnapped my grandfather. And he spent a month in the jungle with his kidnappers. And he never knew if he was going to survive, right? Because you're there, they have like, you know, kept you on a straight jacket and your eyes are always covered. He spent a month in the dark pretty much. And...

that obviously shaped not only his life, but the life of all of us who came after because once something happens in a family like that, is generational trauma, right? I mean, whether we like it or not, it really impacts the whole lineage. And so I wasn't born when this happened, but I came like four or five years later. And he was the definition of kindness and gentleness and.

and creativity and in the most bountiful form because my grandfather was a Renaissance man. After he got released from the kidnap, he had paid every cent he had in his life to that ransom and so he had no money. But he got a loan from that bank because obviously he didn't want to go back. He was like, this is already bad. I don't want to go back to anything that is high profile.

or anything that can put me in peril again or my family. And so he got a loan and he bought a printing company. And so this guy on weekends would sit down on this patio in his house with an easel and create the most incredible paintings. He would call me so that I would sit next to him and say, now you do yours, right? And so he really encouraged me a lot to be me.

I used to write his crazy books and he was the only person who would sit down and listen to me telling him the story. So my grandfather was the person who taught me what being creative really is with actions and, you know, he died, um, 17 years ago and I, um, you know, it's in the book and

Maria Brito

I was in the very beginning of the pandemic and feeling so strange and isolated from the world. And some days sad, some days confused. And I don't know why I had this hit and this hunch that I had to Google his name. And he had been dead for 15 years. And I Googled his name and I was obviously missing him. And the.

Very first thing that comes up is a link to a Reuters video from the day he was released. And I had never seen that before because, you know, who, I mean, my parent, my mom would have never saved that. The technology did not allow back in the 70s to store these things. And nobody in my family had ever Googled my grandfather's name. And

It was a shock because I haven't been back in Venezuela for maybe 14 years and I had not seen that house. That house where I practically grew up is the house that my grandparents had because my mom and my dad worked, so I was left there a lot during the day. So it was a shock of the greatest shock I think I've had in the past.

three years was to find that video. And it was somewhat the beginning of my book. It was almost like a signal. And I wanted to honor him by dedicating this book to him.

Srini RAo

Yeah. Wow. So how in the hell does this rebellious, creative girl who gets sent to the principal's office with this grandfather end up on the path to becoming a corporate attorney?

Maria Brito

Well, because I was a rebel, but I was also in a very difficult situation because I wanted to be a singer and I wanted to be a performer. And when it was cute and a hobby and it was the festival at the school and whatnot, my parents thought, oh my gosh, she's so cute. But when I got offers from touring bands and even a...

a recording company had also gotten in touch with me, my mom said that's a job for hookers and you're not going to do that unless you pick up your stuff and leave. Now if that would have been an American family, I would have picked up my stuff and leave and waited tables and find odd jobs and worked at a store. But in Venezuela...

if you worked at a, you know, anywhere, you not only raise your life, but also you couldn't make a cent to like rent an apartment or like, you know, so I had really no way to pursue that. You know what I'm saying with like the context where I lived. So since I had told you before that I wanted to, I wanted to move out for the longest time. So I...

decided that I was going to go to law school because I was really good at writing and I really liked to read. So I said these two things are just the things I'm good at. I can't be a doctor because I don't like blood and I'm not going to study for 25 years. I can't be an engineer because I don't like math. So it was all about elimination. And I said, well, listen, maybe I find some happiness.

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

fascinated by John Grisham. And so I read those blogs, and I watched the movies, The Firm, and wow, you know what I mean, Tom Cruise, and whatever. And I said, well, man, maybe I just can't go and figure this out, and I can move to the States. And I did. Thanks to that, I went to Harvard Law. And that's how I moved. And so yes, it was not the right thing for me.

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

But it was an important bridge in my life, obviously, because I would have never left had it not been because I got accepted into Harvard.

Srini RAo

So you could have either been the next secure Harvard law graduate.

Maria Brito

That could have been a very interesting thing, but yes, since it's very hard and you would ask any of the big performers from South America, they all needed the support of their family or else they would have not made it.

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Srini RAo

Yeah, I think that's probably very true in India as well. What did you find shocking when you came to the United States as somebody from another country? What aspects of the American culture were shocking or strange to you?

Maria Brito

You know, I think obviously the first shock is the winter, man. Are you kidding me? It's like, that is one shock. And, well, so that's the first thing, right? It's like, how many layers you have to wear and how many things you have to carry with you and how horrific it is. And so that is a thing. And also, I don't know. I think that.

Srini RAo

hahahaha

Srini RAo

Yeah, Cambridge winners are brutal.

Maria Brito

I feel very welcome, to be honest. And I had a lot of great friends, both from the international community at Harvard and from the American community. So I guess the thing is, well, first of all, it's like the amount of work that I had to do every day to know what was going on in the class. Because it's like, OK, here is your assignment for tomorrow is 500 pages and three books.

And that was every day, literally. And I was like, dude, my language is Spanish. I was like, my second language was English, and it is still. And how am I going to read 500 pages? And so the amount of work and seriousness that it was, it's not that I wasn't serious before because I wouldn't have gone into Harvard. But the thing is, I realized why this country is what it is.

there is a, or it was, I'm not sure, this dedication to Excel and to work and to put in the work that was needed. And some people might not have the desire to read 500 pages, but they were able to synthesize the information. And so I knew everybody had gotten already such an incredible training to get to that level. And I feel that was my disadvantage.

God, I'm not as good as these other people at reading and selecting the info and being fast. And, but you know, eventually I graduated too with everybody and I got a job, you know, that I wanted. And so I realized that, you know, we had all gotten there for a reason, but I think that I have enormous respect for how hard people work here or used to. Again, I don't really know.

Srini RAo

So at some point you decided to leave. And I think that what's interesting is I see two versions of this story. One is yours, where somebody finds themselves disillusioned with their six figure salary and high paying job. One is mine, where they could never get that job in the first place. So they had no choice but to do what I've done. And

I think the question that will inevitably come up, and I remember AJ Leon and I talking about this as well, people will say, oh, well, yeah, it's easy for you to say, okay, go quit your job, do this creative thing. You're a Harvard educated lawyer. You probably had a mountain of cash that you were sitting on. So AJ was like, no, he was like, the reason that doesn't happen is because you live in New York and you spend more than you make and you're a banker. So you think the money's never going to stop coming. But I wonder, one, what do you say to those people and what finally got you to leave?

Maria Brito

Ha ha ha!

Maria Brito

Hehehe

Maria Brito

Well, I was miserable because this was not my path, obviously, and I had gotten pregnant with my first child. But before that, I had already questioned the whole thing for a while, and I was like, well, I'm working 16 hours, I'm doing stuff that I don't enjoy, and there is nothing, look, I had already had like three different jobs at three different law firms, and it was not the law firms. They are who they are, they do what they do, they are...

very traditional places that function very well and do make a lot of money. But the problem is that the law firms and I were not in the same space. My talents were not for that. And I did not have any desire to do that. And as I got further into my pregnancy, I was thinking, I'm going to have a baby that it's not going to see me because I'm going to be working 16 hours.

Also, this baby is going to know, because children are very intuitive, that I hate my job. And also, I'm going to say it too. And also, what am I modeling for them? Am I going to be just this person who's going to always be working for somebody else instead of pursuing my real passions, my creativity, the things? OK, I knew I was not going to be a performer anymore, but I knew there were other things that I was very good at that could have turned into a business. And that's what I did.

So regarding the money, I had a 401k. I had some savings, but yes, it's New York. So we pay the highest taxes along with California and the whole country. And you pay New York City taxes, New York State taxes, all sorts of taxes. And I had some savings, but it was not that, oh my god, look, I am Warren Buffett, right? It's not that.

And I just said to my husband, I'm going to quit this job because I can't see myself doing this. There is really, even if I were to stay there forever, because it's really very hard to get fired from a law firm unless you do fraud or something, right? I mean, it's like, it's really hard and they always need you because it's all about billables, right? So...

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

I said to my husband, look, I mean, I just can't do this anymore. And I, so I went back after the baby, actually, because I, you know, like I had the baby and obviously that's, it's a big shock having a baby and, you know, being up all night with him and whatever. And I said, well, I'm going back after the 12 weeks of maternity leave. And when I went back, it was literally the day that.

Lehman and Bear Stearns and Bernie Madoff, it all exploded and our clients were banks. I was like, you know what? I'm so out of here because I understand the purpose, but it's not my purpose anymore and I have no proud on saying that I'm working with Bear Stearns. I don't care about this.

That was September. And in January, they paid the bonus and whatever because I had to collect it. Anyway, I had worked already nine months. I mean, three of my turning leave, but the other nine months, I'm going to get my bonus. And I did, and I left. And I never looked back. I never second guessed that decision. I never thought, oh my god, what if I would have stayed there and turned partner?

I said, you know, this was like literally when I left that building down on Wall Street, it's almost like you took this weight that was, it was so heavy on me. And I said, from this day on, I'm going to live my life and I'm going to be the person I was meant to be. And it is exactly what happened.

Srini RAo

Well, let's actually get into the book. So one of the things you open the book by saying is entrepreneurship is a visionary act of creativity that must positively impact those who are served much in the art that the art enhances changes or enriches the lives of those who experience it. Every artist starts with an idea and then a blank canvas, a clean page, or the cursor blinking on an empty document. And the idea of starting at zero really struck me because I think that there is this.

tendency for anybody who sees the people they look up to like you and they realize they're just starting but their basis for comparison is you and they don't see in their minds like it's so far to go that they can't even wrap their head around it so what do you say to those people like how do they get the motivation to keep going when they're at zero and everybody who they look up to is a thousand miles ahead of them

Maria Brito

Listen, zero is an excellent place to be, because it's how you start forming something. It's like having clay, wet clay in your hands and being able to do anything you want with it. One thing is you have to remember that almost every disruptor is an outsider. Almost everybody who has created things that are incredible that.

are the greatest inventions of our time, are people who do not necessarily belong to that industry, right? Like Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, who was not a coding expert and was not a product designer, right? This is a guy who connected dots. So when people say, well, but I have no experience there, right, I say, well, even better.

Because what happens when you have so much experience in a particular industry is that you start developing a lot of blind spots. And it's because things get comfortable. It's because things are familiar. And of course, having an expertise is very important. Mastery is very important. But also having the ingenuity, right? And having kind of like this naivete thing, like I don't know what's going to happen, is very important.

important for success in entrepreneurship. And everybody has to start somewhere. And I think that because we have been used to seeing this curated lives on social media, that people don't understand that there is effort that goes into everything. And that has to start somewhere. So for the most part, everything starts very, very small. And most also, most know, but every

big thing starts little and in the margins. I mean, of course, people get like, oh my god, look out, like the unicorns, right? The unicorn companies are like, you know, there are, I don't know, 100 unicorns that are valued above a billion dollars. I don't really know the statistic exactly, but what I'm saying is like, it's very, it seems so easy right now how people get to zero to one billion, but.

Maria Brito

There is so much that goes behind that. And also, a lot of people start very, very early these days. Because knowledge is so easy to acquire. And the barriers of entry for that knowledge are so low in comparison to what it was 20 years ago, that there is this tendency to believe that everything has to start. And it's going to be a huge success. And it's going to have revenues of all this billions overnight.

Srini RAo

Hahaha!

Maria Brito

things are, right? So the zero is a great place to be, honestly.

Srini RAo

I think that the thing that I, if I remember, I mean, I'm paraphrasing this, but I said, you know, the greatest thing about not having an audience is that you have sort of a creative freedom that you'll never have again once you do. And that, you know, gives you a lot of power to do experiments and try all sorts of crazy things that you just, you're, you literally are not going to have that freedom again when there's this expectation of, uh, you know, who you're supposed to be from an audience. But there's something you say, and I want to take, to go into this. You say we're living on the front lines of unpredictable change, the avalanche of technology,

political, economic, and cultural upheavals that we face demand creative solutions to big and small business problems every day, continuous use of our creativity, and willingness to innovate is the only solution that we have to get ahead of these dramatic shifts. And you also brought up some statistics from LinkedIn, the World Economic Forum, and I wonder if you could talk about those because it kind of made me start to look at my career and think, wait a minute, I'm probably better off than I thought I was, and I'm probably much more prepared for this than I thought I was.

Maria Brito

Yeah, well, the LinkedIn statistics in the book, when the book went to print, it was, I think, 660 million people that LinkedIn scanned the network, because everything that's happening there is recorded somewhere. But right now, this year, it's about 880 million people who are in the network. And the number one skill that is required when employers are looking to hire or promote

creativity. And at the same time, there is this gap that says that it's also from the data collected by LinkedIn that is the hardest to find. So that's one thing. And then the World Economic Forum last year issued a series of articles last year and the year before saying this is going to future-proof your job. If you are creative, you're set in a way.

coding, you don't have to be the best at what you do. But if you're creative, this is going to really be your shelter. And that's how you're going to be able to keep evolving and growing and pivoting and being successful. And so why is this? It's because we're experiencing the fourth industrial revolution at this point. And this is the time where AI is taking over machines, are displacing people.

The important thing about being human, really, is not only that you're smart and that you're efficient, but it's also this the creativity is exclusively human. Animals are smart, but they are not creative. And what we have right now as a challenge, as a society, is kind of making this gap between why is creativity important and why people think they are not having it.

making that gap shorten to the most small space between what is being clamored for and what people think they can give. Because it is the future of, and we want people to be employed and we want businesses to succeed and we want to be able to have a robust economy and people who are fulfilled, that's very important with what they do. And the only real way to get that is

Maria Brito

with people who are creative, with people who are willing to adjust, adapt, people who are flexible, people who come up with different ways of seeing things, people who actually spot problems that were not considered before. And this is what this my book is about, right? It's about helping people see things also from a perspective that they may not have considered before placing.

art history in a different context that is highly entrepreneurial, which is the truth of every artist, but also it's side-by-side comparing those artists with the greatest entrepreneurs and inventors of humanity according to what I think it is, because box are subjective point of view. I bring my expertise and my-

my adventures and my failures in building my business and being an entrepreneur myself to this book so that people can benefit from it and get something that helps them put themselves and claim for themselves their creativity once again.

Srini RAo

One thing you say is that the trick of successful artists and entrepreneurs is to know how to self-regulate, maintaining that fine balance of autonomy with discipline to get things done. Excessive freedom leads to lack of attention and repeated effort that dilutes concentration and focus. Parameters, structures, and routines counterbalance autonomy. And I think this struck me because I feel like this is just a universal problem for

creative people. I see this over and over and over again. I think it's largely why somebody like Cal Newport has had so much success with his books because these are the problems that all creatives seem to face. How do they actually solve those problems? I feel like they can hear this message over and over and over again and yet you know the number one problem that I get as a response to surveys when we survey our email list is I don't know how to manage my time and attention.

Maria Brito

Well, you know, I think people would cringe about the word routine, but it's important, right? And so having rituals around your life and every day are crucial because that gives you like the parameters, right? I mean, like, here's what you have that you do every day. And when you're not doing those things every day, those are the spaces for you to go wild.

Knock yourself out when you're not really having this routine. And I gave examples and history, and I gave examples about both people in the arts and people in the world of business on how they actually keep these routines happening for them. But then those pockets where you're not following that the yoga class in the morning or the meditation space at 7 AM or the coffee break at

this time and the showing up at the studio or the desk or the recording session or being in front of the canvas. I mean, that is the part of mastery that we all have to get to at some point. I mean, that you're very, very good at what you're doing. So this is not contradictory because for a lot of people is that thing that I don't want to have a routine because it really strangles.

my creativity when the opposite is true. The more you do something, the better. And I think this is a theme that shows up in many different places in the book, not only in the part of like habits and routines, but also when I mentioned improvisation, for example, and how important it is to have a very solid foundation, but to utilize that foundation.

Srini RAo

Mm.

Maria Brito

to play with it. And the only way you can play with the elements that are going to bring the greatest breakthroughs, the greatest ideas, is to have a foundation. And I guess that has to come from within. So how people find the motivation is that by doing what they do, and whether it is writing a book, or painting a canvas, or being a graphic designer, whatever it is that people are doing.

they have to do that and master it every day until they can have the freedom to come up with all these crazy ideas, which usually it just happens by virtue of being engaged. So people have to love what they, you know, like they don't, they can't manage their times because why? Because they are distracted with social media or with video games. Because then it tells me, yeah, you don't love what you're doing, right? I mean, it's like to me.

It's clear. I mean, if you prefer to be playing video games, then maybe find a job as a gamer. Or maybe, no, seriously. I mean, there are things that I have, you have to be very honest, right? I mean, that's the truth. If you can't muster the courage and discipline to be in front of whatever it is that you do every day and to dedicate a serious amount of time to that, not.

Srini RAo

Heheheheheheh!

Maria Brito

dying like an attorney, but like a serious amount of time to your craft, then you don't like that. I think that's a very clear signal.

Srini RAo

Well, I'm so glad you brought this up because we just relaunched our membership community. And when I looked back over the past 10 years of building unmistakable creative and I looked at all the online courses I'd taken, I saw one fatal flaw in all of them. And that was that they all ignored foundational skills. Every one of them. Here's this marketing course on how to grow your blog. Here's this course on how to search and optimize your website. And every single one of them.

I realized would have been completely useless for me without the foundations. It was, I think it was Tyler Thorpe in her book who mentions the karate kid and how, you know, Mr. Miyagi has this kid like washing cars and waxing floors and are standing floors and painting fences only to realize that he's being taught how to defend himself. And it just blew my mind that this has been completely left out because, you know, I said, even if you succeed without these foundational skills, it's like building a house of cards. You can't sustain whatever success you've had.

Maria Brito

Mm-hmm. Yep. You said it beautifully. I think that there are so many incredible courses, like you said, and resources where people can learn specialized skills. Then they do it and they say, but this didn't work for me. Then like, well, why didn't it work for you? Well, because I never did it. I went through the course, but then I never implemented it. Then you have a problem of discipline. It's not about marketing skills, it's not about

how to do SEO and be the Google algorithm. It's more about what is your dedication to things. And that's also the problem of what we talked about, the immediate gratification of things is being consumed by people in a way that makes you think how complicated it is for these new generations to have access to this Amazon Prime. And you know.

buying things that arrive on your doorstep sometimes the same afternoon. Seriously, it's like technology is fabulous. But also, I actually wrote this in the book. It's not a magic pill. Creativity requires work and discipline. If I would have told you, or I would have called the book, here is your magic pill, one hour in your, that kind of title. Like,

Srini RAo

Hahaha, yeah.

Yeah.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

OK, here's your one hour thing. And once you're done, once you finish reading it, you'll be on your way. Well, here's the thing. If you commit yourself to doing all the exercises at the end of each chapter, I see you doing incredible improvements. But if you just read the book, which I hope people will find entertainment and ideas and f***ing

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

you know, find this kind of connections that they never thought about before, because it took me a lot of time to find these connections too, right? But like, if you don't implement these things on your daily life, it's really difficult to see the results that you want. And so I do have great hopes that people will understand that the book will come alive if they actually work with it.

Srini RAo

Yeah. I mean, to me, that's always the ultimate compliment is when somebody actually does something with anything that I've written and says, well, I tried this thing that you did or yeah, and I actually did it, it might not have worked the way I thought it was going to, but at least they did it. And that to me is, is a really good sign. Um, you say that people are becoming more dependent on technology and less independent in their thinking. They're developing a herd mentality and losing their creative power. A brain that's oversaturated has no room for innovation.

consuming excessive amounts of visual, auditory, and tactile stimulus as we have been is like taking a bath in a big tub filled with lavish aromatic salts and bubbles. Once we drain the tub, we're left with a small residue. And that of course struck me because I ended up writing this piece titled information overload is making us stupid, unproductive and poor. And what came to mind in particular was a few years ago, my old business partner, Brian, was a guest here.

Maria Brito

Mm-hmm.

Srini RAo

talking and he offered a free consultation to anybody who took him up on it. And by the time that first meeting happened, the guy who signed up for the consultation didn't even remember why the hell he signed up for it or what it was about. And I was reading that this morning. I thought, you know, we actually need windows of non-stimulation because I realized my best ideas have all come during windows of non-stimulation where there are no devices on I'm literally just using a physical book and a notebook. That's it.

Maria Brito

Well, Serena, you've said it beautifully. And I don't use words as strong as dumb and stupid and poor. But I think that that's what's happening. And that is one of the reasons why I just said to you before that when I came to the States and also when I was growing up and was vacationing here, this was a land where people worked so hard and.

Srini RAo

I'm going to go to bed.

Maria Brito

were committed to their crafts. And I think that, for some reason, I have seen that declining because technology does a far greater job than many humans. And we have to acknowledge that. But not creative humans. I must highlight that. And when we have, for example, a GPS that tells you the route. But this has happened to me so many times. Like an Uber driver and the.

the GPS is saying one thing, but I know that street is closed because I live in Manhattan and I know that street has been closed for like six months. And I tell that person, do not turn. No, but the GPS says, I said, but yes. However, you're going to make me waste 20 minutes if you take that turn because I know that street is closed. And so these people insist that the GPS says, because that's the only way that people have been taught nowadays to think is with the help of technology.

And that's the same thing for everything, right? I mean, as I said before, the way we consume media is what's on the algo. It is the websites that you have seen before. And so it's coming to you with vengeance, right? Because they want to keep selling you the same type of news that you've been reading. And so why is that we need this pockets of silence? It's so that we can, first of all, allow the brain to think for itself.

you know, just taking a break, your brain never really shuts down completely, right? Even when you're sleeping, you're dreaming, or whatever it is. So the brain only shuts down when you're dead. But it is up to us to allow those ideas. Like you said, it's very common that people get their best ideas when they are in silence or when they are doing something that does not require having

50 screens around them and being on the phone talking to someone at the same time texting and you know, petting a dog, right? Like all these things together, right? And and you know, I think it is the benefit of meditation are not only like, you know, people are like, but don't come, you know, I didn't invent these things, right? I'm just putting together information.

Srini RAo

Ha ha ha!

Maria Brito

that has been shared throughout years, millennia, if you will. The silence, the power of silence, the power of prayer, whatever you want to call it. I mean, I'm not advocating for any particular type of thinking and time alone. But the incubation period where your ideas need to marinate and they have to flourish, they have to be in pockets of silence. And that idea might you.

doesn't necessarily have to come when you are in the silence because you may have the idea three days later when you're like swimming or when you are, I don't know, typing something on your computer. But without the pockets of silence, I think it's going to be very hard for people to actually come up with these incredible ideas. And if you study the lives of the most creative people, they always have some sort of silent practice in their lives no matter how they call it. Time to think, time to meditate, time to pray, time to reflect.

Whatever it is.

Srini RAo

Yeah, now I remember Somebody wrote this post years ago that went viral I don't know medium it was like to spend an hour a day doing nothing but thinking or something like that But it made me think I was like, okay I had literally I read that and but I have an idea for a blog post titled one device free hour a day Yeah, it can do wonders for your creativity But I think that makes a perfect segue to talking about intuition and I think you did such a beautiful job connecting intuition with logic you say

that intuition is an accurate piece of information that doesn't come up from using our five senses or from our minds or our experience. It comes from a much higher place than our physical perceptions. Intuition manifests as a flash of insight or repeated series of insights. When you get the hit more than once with the same message, don't ignore it. Intuition is always right. What's wrong is our interpretation of the intuitive message. And then later on, you say that intuition alone borders on the vague and abstract. We must use our higher senses to help us

make the right decisions, our intuition gives us answers that could otherwise not be accessed through rational thinking. And many times it saves us from taking the wrong path. So I think I really appreciated that because it basically wasn't just a bunch of new age bullshit of follow your intuition or follow your passion nonsense that doesn't have any logic behind it. So talk to me about how people combine intuition with logic because Robert Greene told me once that mastery is

a combination of the rational and the intuitive.

Maria Brito

Intuition hasn't been studied enough because it's not tangible. And it's not something that they can, the scientists can put a machine and measure it. But the topic of intuition in business and in any endeavor, human endeavor, has come up to the surface lately more and more because there are things that humans cannot necessarily explain.

why you took a different path to work one day, and you stumble upon this person who became your business partner, or why is it that you were guided to a particular book at a bookstore, and you took it with you, and then that was your million dollar idea. And I'm just leaving it at the context of business, because in personal relationships and everything is filled with examples of how people follow their intuition and end up somewhere.

meeting their husband or wife or whatever. But the point is that since it is not necessarily a topic that has been studied and measured, we don't necessarily have a lot of studies to rely on. So I actually do mention one of the studies in the book, and it's about this professors who analyze, I think it's like 6,000 pieces of data and studies from the biggest.

databases of Scopus and Google Scholar and things like that. And they were trying to find where the big leaps happen. And so the big leaps is like this big breakthrough that comes from a place where a scientist, an artist, or a business person doesn't really know how they got to that, if that makes sense. And they found that the common denominator of all those big leaps is when these people were interviewed,

they said it was an intuitive hit. It was an insight. It was a hunch. Sometimes people don't use the same words, but it was something that they were able to get to this breakthrough, whether it is a big invention or something that advances the arts or whatever, because they follow that intuitive notch. And so the logical part is that, you know.

Maria Brito

We have education and we have experiences. And those are the two things that form our logic, right? Like we have had years and years of formal education, but we also are in the world having experiences, right? I mean, we know how to cross the street. We know how to, you know, we also know how things happen in our businesses. We learn from the mistakes, from lessons and things like that. And so when you see a really little kid, like a toddler,

Tutlers are highly intuitive, but they don't have the logical part, right? Because they have not had the experience of being in the world for more than two or three years or whatever. And so imagine if you would leave a toddler making decisions, right? I mean, it's like a mess, right? I mean, it's a disaster if you would leave a toddler just making decisions that have to do with your house or your finances and things like that, right? But when a child is, let's say, 10, 11, that's a disaster.

It's like a mind that already can rely a lot on your intuitive hits, and it also can rely on education. So that's an example just for you to think about how these two things come together in a person's life. And it's important, because what Robert Green said about mastery is basically what I had been discussing before is that you need to have some sort of expertise that you have developed by doing the work.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

That is your logical part. And this kind of moments where the inspiration comes, whatever you want to call it, the muse visits you. Although that's, as we know, it's not necessarily how creativity happens. But the parts where you're like, wow, my aha moment and all that is usually the result of following an intuitive hit. Because that's how, having you been in those situations where you're like, how can I never thought about this before?

And then you're like, I'm going to see how to implement this in my business. And you have absolutely no clue where that came from. Yet it works out, right? And how do you explain that? And so well, I mean, people who love to have everything backed up by science will say, well, because of these processes, and you saw it, and it was stored in your subconscious for ages. OK.

fine, that is one way of explaining it. I think in my opinion, I still think and believe that intuition is a very, very important part, that people do not utilize and trust as much as they should because they favor logic. And the point is to balance both. And, and, you know, I like there are countless of examples in the book of people who utilized both to get to phenomenal moments in history.

Srini RAo

Well, it's funny you say that because I basically have this entire automated podcast calendar. And I remember connecting all these dots like I think I told you my pattern recognition system is probably overloaded because of the job that I have. But I remember reading about Amazon Web Services and seeing how Amazon Web Services started as something they used internally for their own needs. And then it turned out that they could sell it as a multi billion dollar product and

I got that from two, one of them was from reading a book about Amazon and another was from Scott Galloway's book called post Corona, where he called it the fly wheel. And I thought to myself, like, wait a minute, how many other companies have done this? Like base camp did this. That's how they built their business. It was like, huh. I'm like, there are thousands of podcasters. I've seen their production process. It's wildly inefficient. I know because they send me multiple emails that I don't want to read just a coordinated meeting. Like, wait a minute, we could turn this into something that we could sell to podcasters.

And it was just seriously just a connection, a bunch of connecting dots.

Maria Brito

And it was, but you actually followed your intuitive hunch. And you said, let me explore this. Because one thing is that you had the logic. Because you had read the books, you knew what Amazon was, you had the information. And then you had an intuitive hit about something that you had never thought about before. But it was part of an idea that you could potentially mine and explore. And you went with it. The problem is a lot of people will say,

Srini RAo

Yeah.

Maria Brito

forget it. There is somebody else out there who could be better at this or you know I'm just too busy with what I'm doing right now to add one more thing to my plate you know and this is where we tend to leave millions of dollars on the table because just not following that insight and that hunch and it's a shame you know.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm. Well, I think for me, I realized that I needed my personal skunkworks, which was I'm not gonna involve my team in all these things and, you know, get them distracted from what we need them to do. But I will explore these things and do very small versions of them, take small risks and invest a little bit of time in seeing them so that I don't take away from like the big thing that I'm doing.

Maria Brito

And I think that's the importance of knowing when the CEO of a company like you can actually be the decision maker and the creative mind behind the decisions. OK, so you want people to do what they do best, but you also want to invite your team to have this moment of freedom, whatever it is they want to do. You don't want to distract them, but you also want to remember also from the 20% of free time of Google.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

not free time, but the time that they can dedicate to whatever project they want to pursue is where the greatest inventions that Google has put out come from. And so it's important to allow people to have this moment where they are really creative and they can go wild with it. And then you evaluate. But that's also a problem in America. Remember, we are always thinking about efficiency, efficiency. And how do you make people efficient is like you make them

be the best at what they do, but with such a narrow focus. And then they get old, and then you replace them with machines. And that's a problem. And that is a really big problem of corporate America and America in general, is that you train people to be hyper-specialists when the world is actually asking for something else. This just doesn't make any sense. And that's why it bothers me when I see this gap. And also Adobe ran an entire study. Adobe is a wonderful.

Srini RAo

Mm-hmm.

Maria Brito

company that has made a lot of inroads in the world and science and business of creativity because it interests us tremendously and they conducted the surveys in Germany, Japan, the United States and they gather all this information and say, you know, what is the most important thing is like to be creative and so only one in four people said I am creative and I'm living at my creative capabilities.

So they went further and asked them, and why is it that you can't be creative? And they said, because I don't have time, because I don't have the tools. And so you think about it, and it's like you don't have the time because your employer is asking you to just be hyper specialized, and you can't really think outside of the parameters that you've been given. And when they say the tools, that is a problem because the tools are inside of us. We all have them. We are all d***.

profoundly creative, but we don't use them.

Srini RAo

Wow. I feel like I could sit here and talk to you all day. I feel like I'm going to have about a billion dollars worth of ideas just from having read your book. And just from that one last sentence, I literally thought, wait a minute, there's a thousand other ideas that I could be working on just from what you just said. I want to wrap things up with my final question, which I know you've heard me ask. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Maria Brito

Ha ha ha.

Maria Brito

Well, look, I mean, I think the authenticity and uniqueness of each one of us is the most important thing, to respect and to rely on. And here's why, no two people are alike in the world, because each one of us has had our own backgrounds, parents, set of circumstances, trials and tribulations, triumphs and failures, the way that each one of us sees the world.

and is informed by all these things that I said before, is unique. And we want to be able to take these things out of our head and into the world. And it comes just from the uniqueness of each human being. So I think it's important for people to respect that authenticity, that uniqueness, that autonomy, that makes them who they are. And this is what.

is unmistakably creative. It's that space where you allow yourself to be yourself in spite of what you think the world is thinking or will think if you put these things out in the world.

Srini RAo

Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your book and everything else you're up to?

Maria Brito

Yes, I'm at MariaBritto.com. That's my website is B-R-I-T, just one T-O.com. And my book is How Creativity Rules the World. And it is everywhere. So Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop, independent bookstores around the country is published by HarperCollins.

And I can't wait to hear from you guys. If you like that or not, just send me a message. There is a form on my website, so you can get in touch with me. I would love to know what you guys thought.

Srini RAo

Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.